mothersdayportrait.org lempicka mother’s day …mothersdayportrait.org/mothers_day_booklet.pdf ·...

MOTHER’S DAYTeacher’s Portrait Project Pack

MOTHERSDAYPORTRAIT.ORG

MESSAGESPR.CO.UK

MATISSELEMPICKACEZANNEWHISTLERLAUTRECVAN GOGHPICASSOFREUDWARHOL

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MOTHER’S DAY PORTRAIT PACK

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PREV

IOUS W

ORK


LESSON FRIENDLY

DEAR TEACHERS...Here are some excellent links for further study

and examples. Be mindful that any random search

for portraiture will inevitably link to one of arts

enduring images - the nude.

BBC YOUR PAINTINGS

www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/

Thousands of paintings and information on your local

galleries and collections. Your Paintings is a website

which aims to show the entire UK national collection

of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and

where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings

from thousands of museums and other public

institutions around the country.

THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

www.npg.org.uk

Find pictures of the celebrities, the rich and famous

and key figures in history when there were no paparazzi

to snap them and a portrait was the revealing legacy of

their looks.

ROYAL SOCIETY OF PORTRAIT PAINTERS

www.therp.co.uk

A great place to look at contemporary portraiture.

Created to encourage the appreciation, study and

practice of the art of portraiture, the website shows that

the skills of portrait painting are still very much alive.

The Mothers Day

Portrait project is

organised in association

with your local Shopping

Centre by:

Messages PR,

The Church House,

Lustleigh, Devon

TQ13 9TJ

01647 277588

01647 277589

[email protected]

We have created this modest booklet to support the

Mother’s Day portrait project and we hope inspire the

children with some great art by many famous artists.

Some of the detail and information enclosed is

perhaps a little sophisticated but we wanted to provide

as much factual information as we could and the

project material on our companion website

www.motherdayportrait.org is very accessible for all ages.

Some of the pictures represent motherhood but many

of the artists, including Picasso, Warhol and VanGogh

have painted their own mothers and these pictures

are highlighted*.

The project is being run with your local shopping

centre and we plan to display as many of the pictures

as we can - recreating the public gallery experience

for some of the best young artists.

We have also added a facebook element to the

project to allow us to share all the pictures on a gallery

on the Shopping Centre’s facebook page and ensure

that mothers and families can see and share their

children’s work.

All the details are on the entry forms which we have

sent with this booklet - should you want more or have

any requests, comments or suggestions please do

not hesitate to get in touch.

We hope your classes will get as much pleasure from

looking at these pictures and creating their mother’s

portraits as we have had compiling the project pack

and seeing the amazing art children are capable of.

These are just some examples of the mother’s day portraits children have created in previous projects. LINKS...

MIXED MEDIA

OLDER AGE GROUP YOUNGER AGE GROUP

VISIT OUR MOTHERS DAY PORTRAIT WEBSITE:www.mothersdayportrait.org

FOR MORE PROJECT MATERIAL INCLUDING

Download and edit a gallery of the portraits

Lesson Plan and Links

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WHAT

IS A

PORT

RAIT?


The person shown in a portrait is known as the

sitter. Portraits can tell us a great deal about

a person. For instance, it can show us simple

things like what colour someone’s hair or eyes

are, or if a person is happy or sad. It can also

show us what someone does as a job; for

example, if your mother is a policewoman you

might like to show her wearing part of her

uniform such as her hat. A portrait can also

give us lots of information about the period

when the portrait was drawn. If you look at the

pictures in the pack you will see lots of

differences between them, such as the clothes,

hairstyles and how people lived, i.e. whether or

not someone had a lot of money.

Most portraits try to show the viewer a bit about

what the person is like. If someone is always

happy then they are likely to be drawn smiling or

laughing. If a person likes to read or paint then

they might be shown doing this. A portrait can

even show us things about a person’s beliefs;

for example, if your mother is a Hindu she might

wear a red dot on her forehead, some Muslim

women wear veils, a Christian person might be

shown praying or reading the bible.

All the examples of portraits contained in this

pack are examples of how an artist has drawn

either their own mother or aspects of

motherhood that they have seen around them.

The portraits are in various styles and come

from all around the world. Many of them are

from different eras dating from the 100-125 A.D.

to the present day. The material that is used to

paint or draw with is known as the medium and

there are several examples of different media in

this pack.

A portrait is a picture of someone’s head and shoulders, although some portraits do show people seated or standing. If a portrait is drawn from the side it is called

a profile.

In England, the fourth Sunday in Lent is traditionally

known as Mothering Sunday. It was first written about

in 1664 by a Richard Symonds in his “Diary of the

Marches of the Royal Army during the Great Civil War”,

where he noted that, “ Every Mid-Lent Sunday is a great

day at Worcester, when all the children meet at the

home of the chief of the family and have a feast. They

call it “Mothering - Day”. It is believed that the roots of

this custom date back even earlier to pre - reformation

times when, on Mid-Lent Sunday, parishioners went to

the Mother Church or Cathedral to make their offerings.

Mid-Lent Sunday was also one of the few days a year

when apprentices and servants (often young girls and

boys) were given half a day off to visit their families.

It was traditional that they should take with them a

small gift that was usually a small bunch of violets or

primroses, which they had picked along the way, or

a Simnel cake (a rich Saffron flavoured fruit cake with

almond icing). Today, in some churches at special

services, children bring mothering posies to be blessed.

Although this is a modern practice, it is still symbolic of

the connection between the Church and family.

In England we often call Mothering Sunday, ‘Mother’s

Day’. This is a mistake because ‘Mother’s Day’ is an

American Secular (non-religious) Holiday, and is held on

the second Sunday in May. This was designated a day

to honour Motherhood in 1914 after Miss Anna Jarvis,

whose mother had died, lobbied congress to recognise

it as a day set aside in the American calendar dedicated

to “the best mother in the world, your mother.”

In America the symbol of Mother’s Day is a white

carnation rather than the primroses and violets

favoured in England.

Up until the Second World War, Mothering Sunday

had largely died out in England but it was revived when

American servicemen based over here reminded the

English people of their own day. Since then,

Mothering Sunday or, as it is more commonly and

incorrectly known, Mother’s Day has become much

more widespread and commercialised. It is once more

a popular custom for children to take a small gift to their

mothers on Mothering Sunday.

MOTHERING SUNDAYT his portrait of an Egyptian Lady was found on a sarcophagus (a decorated coffin). If you look at the portrait you can see that she would have been a noble lady - you can

tell this by the jewellery she wears and the gold

leaf crown.

It is possible to say that this lady shows the

typical dress and demeanour of women and

mothers of noble birth at this time. The fact she

is looking away from us shows that she lived in

a patriarchal society where women were seen

as wives and mothers and where they did not

have jobs or take part in making decisions.

The medium of this portrait is called Encaustic.

Paint created by mixing pigment with hot wax

(usually beeswax) and applying this to a surface

while it was still hot.

After all the colours had been applied, the whole

picture was then heated again to fix all the paint

layers together. Encaustic paintings are the

most commonly found on mummy cases of the

second to fourth centuries when it was used

to create a thick, vibrant, matte surface which

lasted for a long time.

Title: Portrait of a Woman 100-125AD Medium: Encaustic and gold leaf on panelHoused: The J. Paul Getty Museum

THE ARTISTUNKNOWN

Egyptian 2nd Century AD

The use of dark space allows the viewer to

be drawn to the white scarf framing her face.

Among the artists of his time, Cézanne

perhaps has had the most profound effect on

the art of the twentieth century. He was the

greatest single influence on both the French

artist Henri Matisse, who admired his use of

colour, and the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso,

who developed Cézanne’s planar (flat)

compositional structure into the cubist style.

During the greater part of his own lifetime,

however, Cézanne was largely ignored, and

he worked in isolation. He mistrusted critics,

had few friends and, until 1895, exhibited

only occasionally. He was alienated even

from his father, a wealthy banker, who found

his behaviour peculiar and failed to

appreciate his revolutionary art.

Today Cézanne’s works are highly valued

and his picture “Still life with Fruit and Pot of

Ginger” (shown below) was sold at auction in

New York for $18,191,936 in June 2000.

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7

THE ARTISTLEONARDO DA VINCIItalian 1452-1519

Title: Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) 1503 Medium: Oil on wooden panel Housed: Musee du Louvre, Paris


THE ARTISTPAUL CÉZANNE

French 1839-1906

Title: Portrait of the Artists Mother 1866 Medium: Oil on canvasHoused: The St. Louis Art Museum

Cézanne was a front-runner of the Impressionist Movement at the end of the nineteenth century. This is one of his earlier works and you can already see his

heavily painted style coming through in this

classically posed painting.

he was ignored and worked in isolation“

“The Mona Lisa is painted on a wooden panel

and the medium is oil paint. It is called this

because “drying” oil was used to set the

pigment to the canvas or panel. The oil used

could be linseed, walnut or poppy seed.

They are called drying oils because they form

a solid film on exposure to the air. The use of

oil in this way can be traced back to the fifth

and sixth centuries.

The portrait itself tells us quite a bit about

fashion in sixteenth century Italy. The Mona

Lisa wears a plain dress with no jewellery and

her hair is in a very simple style.

She is modestly looking away from the

artist and a veil like appearance around her

face enhances this hint of coyness.

Her expression is very gentle and content

and she appears to be smiling with her

hands in a relaxed position on her lap.

The background shows us what the

countryside must have looked like in Italy in

the sixteenth century, but the only sign of

human habitation is a bridge.

T his is perhaps the best-known portrait ever painted, no one is really sure who the lady is. There are two main theories. One is that the lady, known only as “a certain

Florentine lady” was painted on the request

of Guiliano de Medici (Leonardo’s sponsor in

Rome from 1513 onwards). Secondly, Vasari

claims that Mona Lisa was the wife of the

Florentine, Francisco del Giocondo.

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

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THE ARTISTJAMES WHISTLERAmerican 1834-1903

Title: Portrait de la comtesse Adele de Toulouse-Lautrec 1883 Medium: Oil on canvas Housed: Musee Toulouse Lautrec, Albi.

Not only does this portrait show us Whistler’s

mother’s social status as a lady, but also the

mode of dress is that of a refined widow.

The portrait is also said to show the typical

Huguenot (French Protestant) interior of this

period in history.

Whistler was undoubtedly a highly talented

portrait painter; but Oscar Wilde commented

in 1883 that “Popularity is the only insult that

has not yet been offered to Mr. Whistler”,

implying that he was a controversial figure in

artistic circles.

Painted in oils on canvas this portrait with its

formal arrangement and its outline is

representative of the considered view of

motherhood in the late nineteenth century.


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Title: Arrangement in Grey and Black Portrait of The Artist’s Mother Circa 1871 Medium: Oil on canvas Housed: Musee du Louvre, Paris

This portrait of Whistler’s mother has been called the universal symbol of motherhood. It is widely known, so much so that in 1934 it was used on a stamp to commemorate the

American Mother’s Day.

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

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THE ARTISTBERTHE MORISOTFrench 1841-1895

Title: The Cradle 1872 Medium: Oil on canvasHoused: Musee d’Orsay


THE ARTISTTOULOUSE-LAUTREC

French 1864-1901

Title: Portrait de la comtesse Adele de Toulouse-Lautrec 1883 Medium: Oil on canvas Housed: Musee Toulouse Lautrec, Albi.

most famous for his cabaret posters“

“

Painted in Paris in 1872, the Cradle was exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. The image shows one of the artist’s sisters watching over her sleeping

daughter. It is the first image in Morisot’s work

to depict motherhood – later one of her

favourite subjects.

The mother’s gaze, her bent left arm, a mirror

image of the child’s arm, and the baby’s closed

eyes form a diagonal line that is further

accentuated by the movement of the curtain

in the background.

This diagonal links the mother to her child.

The mother’s gesture, drawing the net curtain of

the cradle between the spectator and the baby,

further reinforces the feeling of intimacy and

protective love expressed in the painting.

In 1894, Morisot was described by Gustave

Geffroy as one of “les trios grande dames” of

impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond

and Mary Cassatt.

Lautrec has become closely associated with the late nineteenth century decadent artistic community living in the Monmatre suburb of Paris and typified by films like “Moulin Rouge”.

HENRI de

Lautrec was indeed an eccentric figure with

a large appetite for wine and women. But he

also had a close relationship with his mother,

who helped him with his health and financial

problems throughout his short and tempestuous

life. Most famous for his Cabaret posters and

bawdy pictures of Paris nightlife, the portrait of

his mother shows a more gentle and sensitive

side to the artist’s talents. The picture makes

Lautrec’s mother look awkward and formal.

In 1882 he moved to Paris with his mother

from the family home - a large estate in South

West France. Lautrec’s father and mother were

from a wealthy aristocratic family and were first

cousins and this could have contributed to Henri

inheriting a congenital weakness of the bones.

Two falls in his childhood and the congenital

weakness caused Lautrec to stop growing and

though over five foot tall, a large head and short

legs made him appear dwarfish.

When Lautrec’s decline into alcoholism and ill

health became acute, his mother had him

committed to a private clinic outside Paris.

He made a brief recovery and was looked after

by a cousin but, in the summer of 1901, he

collapsed while taking sea air near Bordeaux

and his mother took him back to Malrome,

where he died on 9 September.

When you look at the portrait of Lautrec’s

mother, painted when he was an innocent 19

year old, it is interesting to speculate whether

she could have predicted her son’s astonishing

talent and tragic self destructive character that

would lead to his premature death at 36.

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

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THE ARTISTVINCENT VAN GOGHDutch 1853-1890

Title: Portrait of Artists Mother 1888 Medium: Oil on canvas


THE ARTISTMARY CASSATT

American 1844-1926

Title: Mrs Robert S. Cassatt The Artist’s Mother Circa 1889 Medium: Oil on canvas Housed: Fine Art Museums of San Francisco

Saint-Rémy 2 February 1890

My dear Theo,

Today I received your good news that you are at

last a father, that the most critical time is over for

Jo, and finally that the little boy is well.

That has done me more good and given me

more pleasure than I can put into words.

Bravo-and how pleased Mother is going to be.

The day before yesterday I received a fairly long

and very contented letter from her too. Anyhow,

here it is, the thing I have so much desired for

such a long time.

No need to tell you that I have often thought of

you these days, and it touched me very much

that Jo had the kindness to write to me the very

night before. She was so brave and calm in

her danger, it moved me very deeply.

In Paris, Cassatt repeatedly submitted artwork

to the Salon with little success. When her close

friend Edgar Degas invited Cassatt to participate

in an independent exhibition organized by the

group that would later be known as the

Impressionists, she readily accepted. Cassatt

was the only American artist to be included in any

of the Impressionists’ eight exhibitions.

Best known for her depictions of women with

their children, here Cassatt presents a subdued

and reflective portrayal of her aging mother,

whose clear and commanding gaze

demonstrates a contemplative intelligence.

Drawing from Japanese prints as well as Old

Masters techniques, Cassatt renders this with

complexity and intimacy, revealing an enduring

relationship of mutual love and respect.

Van Gogh only ever painted one portrait of a family member. The portrait is of his mother, not from life but from a black and white photograph. In the photo, his mother appears

stiff and matriarchal, whereas in the painting

she is more animated, with relaxed and

warmer features. Van Gogh may well have

been representing his mother as he wished to

remember her rather than as she actually was.

Van Gogh’s relationship with his parents was

not always good. He wrote “They are as

reluctant to let me into the house as they would

be to let in a big shaggy dog.” The camera may

never lie, but portraits can paint a relationship in

a better light.

Van Gogh had a strong belief, however, in the

importance of parenthood. Below is a touching

excerpt from a letter sent to his brother Theo

congratulating Theo and his wife Jo on the birth

of their son. The last sentence reminds us that

before modern medicine reduced death in

childbirth, motherhood carried considerable

dangers.

“

“

Cassatt was born in America but her dedication to art led her to live and work in France for most of her adult life where she befriended Degas.

Degas invited Cassatt to participate“

“

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHERTHE ART

IST’S

MOTHER

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15

A year later after marrying Taduesz Lempicki,

her husband was arrested by the Bolsheviks,

and Tamara braved the Russian Revolution to

free him, using her good looks to charm favours

from the necessary officials. The couple fled to

Paris and that’s where the story of Tamara de

Lempicka’s fantastic life really begins.

THE ARTISTHENRI MATISSEFrench 1869-1954

Title: The Painter’s Family 1911 Medium: Oil on canvasHoused: Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg

Henri Matisse has been called the supreme colourist of the twentieth century. After 1907, much of his work was concentrated on purity of line, decorative pattern and colour.

All of these elements can be seen in his

1911 portrait of his family. In this portrait of

Matisse’s mother, her red hair and brown eyes

help to show off her wholesome complexion.

She has an interested and amused expression

on her face as she watches her children involved

in games and daydreaming.

The vibrancy of the colours was achieved

through the use of oils, and the picture is

painted on canvas. Her black dress has

a white ruff which takes away some of the

severity of her clothing. She wears her hair

pulled back from her face presumably in a

bun, more a practical than a decorative style.

This is not a formal portrait; there is a great

deal of movement in the picture, showing us

that Matisse remembers his mother as an

active and practical person. MOTHER’S DAY PORTRAIT PACK

Why not visit:Henri Matisse: The Cut-OutsTate Modern: Exhibition17 April – 7 September 2014

THE ARTISTTAMARA DE LEMPICKA

Polish 1898-1980

Title: Mother and Child 1931 Medium: Oil on wood panel

Art Deco, a classical, symmetrical, rectilinear style that reached its high point between 1925-1935, drew its inspiration from such serious art movements as Cubism, Futurism,

and the influence of the Bauhaus. In Paris, it

was a dominant art form of the 1920-1930

period. Of all the artists pursuing the style

“Arts Decoratifs”, one of the most memorable

was Tamara de Lempicka.

the favorite artist of the Hollywood stars“

“

She became a well-known portrait painter with

a distinctive Art Deco manner. Quintessentially

French, Deco was the part of an exotic, sexy,

and glamorous Paris that epitomized Tamara’s

living and painting style.

Between the wars, she painted portraits of

writers, entertainers, artists, scientists, industrialists,

and many of Eastern Europe’s exiled nobility.

The work brought her critical acclaim, social

celebrity and considerable wealth.

At the threat of a second World War, she left

Paris for America. She went to Hollywood,

to become the “Favorite Artist of the

Hollywood Stars”.

The advent of Abstract Expressionism and her

advancing age halted her career in the 1950’s

and 1960’s.

However, a young man named Alain Blondel

launched a major retrospective of Lempicka’s

work which almost single handedly revived the

Art Deco movement.

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

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THE ARTISTPABLO PICASSO

Spanish 1881-1973

Most people associate Picasso with modern art and abstract images with bold colours and strong shapes. As a child, however, Picasso possessed a precocious talent, which

allowed him to excel in more traditional styles.

He himself was in no doubt about his gift,

saying “I never did childish drawings; at the age

of twelve I was painting like Raphael.”

This pastel sketch of Picasso’s mother Maria was

drawn when Picasso was just 14 years old.

The picture is an accurate and affectionate

portrait of his mother illustrating her as a proud

and handsome Spanish lady from Andalusia with

the dark eyes and hair that Picasso inherited.

Picasso’s father was called Jose Ruiz Blasco, an

art teacher, restorer and the curator of a museum

in Malaga. Picasso, however, chose his mother’s

surname for his art, which went on to dominate

the twentieth century.

drawn her as a proud and handsome woman“

“

Title: Sketch of Artist’s Mother 1896 Medium: Pastel on PaperHoused: Picasso Museum Barcelona

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THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

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THE ARTISTJOSEPH DELANEYAmerican 1904-1991

Title: The Painter’s Mother 1941 Medium: Tempera and varnish/woodHoused: Delaney Family Collection


THE ARTISTJAMINI ROY

Indian 1887-1972

This sensitive study in muted colour and soft

tones does indeed “capture” her dignity and

serenity.

Artist Joseph Delaney was born in Knoxville,

Tennessee, in 1904, ninth of ten children and the

son of a Methodist minister. Joe and his family

went regularly to church and it was there that

Joseph discovered his interest in art by drawing

on Sunday school cards.

In 1930, Joe left Knoxville for New York and

soon became a student at the Art Students

League. (Some of his classmates were

Jackson Pollock, Henry Stair and Bruce

Mitchell). Drawing and painting from all the

various visual resources available, Joseph spent

the next 56 years living and producing his art in

the area of lower Manhattan, Soho and Union

Square. Joseph Delaney returned to Knoxville to

live in 1986, and was artist-in-residence for the

University of Tennessee Department of Art until

his death in 1991.

In the 1920s, many experiments in art took place in Calcutta and Santiniketan. Amidst this activity, the story of Jamini Roy, who turned to the folk arts of Bengal, is remarkable.

Sometimes great art can be created in a spontaneous way. This is one of the few portraits painted from life by Joseph Delaney. On a visit home to Knoxville, Joseph

was in his brother Samuel’s barber shop where

their mother, Delia, frequently sat and did

needlework. Suddenly he felt the need to

“capture his mother in a painting.”

indeed capture her dignity and serenity“

“

Title: Mother and Child 1944 Medium: Watercolour on CardHoused: Indian Society of Oriental Art

Roy adopted this simplification of the forms,

the bold, flat colours and discarded expensive

canvas and oil paint and opted for the more

inexpensive material and medium of the

folk artist.

He painted ordinary men and women from the

village and restricted his palette to seven colours

of Indian red, yellow ochre, cadmium green,

vermillion, grey, blue and white.

One of Roy’s most important subjects was his

depiction of the mother and child he felt that the

subject was symbolic of the core of the village

and family and represented the roots of life itself.

In this particular project, the two figures have

been transformed from the lifelike into a state of

the iconic.

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

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THE ARTISTLUCIAN FREUDGerman/British 1922-2011

Lucian Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis and thus part of a famous family. Many regard Freud as the greatest figurative

painter of our time. Known chiefly for his thick

brushstrokes and heavily impastoed (layered)

portrait and figure paintings, Freud was widely

considered the pre-eminent British artist of his

time. His works are noted for their psychological

penetration, and for their often discomforting

examination of the relationship between artist

and model.

Freud prefers to not use professional models,

to rather have friends and acquaintances pose

for him, someone who really wants to be there

rather than someone he’s paying. “I could never

put anything into a picture that wasn’t actually

there in front of me. That would be a pointless

lie, a mere bit of artfulness.”

Freud’s colour palette is very muted with an

apparent lack of colour, addressing this Freud

stated, “I don’t want it to operate in the

modernist sense as colour ... Full, saturated

colours have an emotional significance I want to

avoid.” Freud was more concerned with

capturing the essence of his subjects as

opposed to a likeness. He wanted the paint

to “work as flesh... [his] portraits to be of the

people, not like them. Not having a look of the

sitter, being them.”

Title: The Painters Mother II 1972 Medium: Oil on canvasHoused: Private Collection


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Freud spent 4000 hours on a series of paintings about his mother“

“

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

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THE ARTISTANDY WARHOLAmerican 1928-1987

Title: Julia Warhol 1974 Medium: Silkscreen Print


THE ARTISTDAVID HOCKNEY

British 1937-

Title: Portrait of the Artists Mother 1985 Medium: Photo CollageHoused: Getty Museum

In the early 1980s, a number of artists, including David Hockney began experimenting with large-scale images made from out of Polaroid prints, much as

the earliest photographers had “composited”

large scenes from multiple negatives.

the viewer can build up a single image“

“He first exhibited in an art gallery in 1962, when the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles showed his 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1961-62. From then on, most of Warhol’s best work was done over

a span of about six years, finishing in 1968,

when he was shot.

Earlier artists, like Monet, had painted the same

motif in series in order to display minute

discriminations of perception, the shift of light

and colour form hour to hour on a haystack,

and Warhol has been the subject of numerous

retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature

and documentary films. He coined the widely

used expression “15 minutes of fame”.

In the early practice, much care was given to

seamless registration of the images, but in

the ‘80s revival, small jumps of viewing angle

came to be valued, by none more so than by

David Hockney. Hockney pasted the prints

onto a single background.

Hockney reflected extensively on this process

as connecting to the Cubist sense of multiple

angles and especially of movement. Hockney

argued that these “multiples” convey a strong

sense of movement, in that the viewer keeps

adjusting their imagined viewpoint as the eye

travels from print to print.

By this means the viewer can build up a

single image that is many times wider in

angle of view than the camera lens.

(The viewing angle of a standard 55mm lens

for a 35mm format camera is about 45

degrees. Wide angle lenses increase the

angle of view to about 75 degrees without

obvious distortion, but the human angle

of view, with eye movement, is about 180

degrees.) This portrait of his mother illustrates

the technique at close range.

Andy Warhol began as a commercial illustrator, and a very successful one, doing jobs like shoe ads for I. Miller in a stylish blotty line that derived from Ben Shahn.

Many of his creations are very collectible and

highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for

a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963

canvas titled Eight Elvises (shown below).

15 minutesof fame“

“

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

THE ARTIST’S

MOTHER

MATISSELEMPICKACEZANNE

WHISTLERLAUTREC

VAN GOGHPICASSO

FREUDWARHOL

MOTHERSDAYPORTRAIT.ORG

MESSAGESPR.CO.UK

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